#4 Africa in my Blood
July 19, 2024
What a title! What promise! Bringing to mind a dramatic mass-migratory politically-charged bundu-bashing Africa, rampaging with rhinos and cinematic sunsets…
That was not the Africa of my childhood.
I grew up in the terry-towelled suburbs of Cape Town in the 1970/’80s. It was obviously a horrific time for the country’s non-white majority under Apartheid. Despite this backdrop, my life was filled with small moments of beauty and fulfilment mainly centred around a windy, scruffy, glorious beach on the Indian Ocean side of Table Mountain, called Muizenberg.
I could have been anywhere really. Jumping over tiny sparkling waves for hours, dripping ice-lollies, sunburnt skin, hot-footing over broken glass and burning sand, taking in the smell of salt air and chewing gum melting on hot tar.
All small. Yet somehow in the olden days, before the digital revolution, even the most suburban of childhoods found a way of being elemental…
Water
My twin sister Sue and I went swimming almost every day of the summer. We wore our ladybird bikini bottoms, which we called our ‘ghogga-pants’. Insects and bogeys were ‘ghoggas’. Boy we were cute and people still remember us decades later, the matching twins of Muizenberg Beach.
My mom wore bathing caps and VERY rarely swam. In fact so few grown-ups swam, compared to the hours and hours we would spend jumping in the perfect little waves – that I actually lamented in advance, age about 10, that when I was a grown-up I would inevitably lose the joy of swimming. But I didn’t, and neither did Sue, though it does take us slightly longer to get in and a lot quicker to get out!
Fire
After our swims we would lie frying to a crisp behind the boxes (beach huts), gossiping on the hot sand, protected from the afternoon South-Easter, salty, tangle-haired, happy from too much sun.
The beach huts have changed over the years and are now Instagram famous, but I haven’t see anyone frying like fritters behind them for years. So I guess that really was a very particular moment in time, existing only in memories, and maybe also in a few suspicious looking moles… and the Glass Cathedral of teenage Sue and me.
Air
One summer a circus set up a stage on the grass behind the concrete beach toilets, and at the end of every day they’d perform.
The trapeze artists were the last act – a man and a woman dressed in tight white sparkling leotards. Though it was the mid ’80s, and it smelled a bit of wee, in my mind’s eye their glamour is as timeless and intoxicating as old Hollywood. They stood on their platforms and dusted their hands, and then they flew through the air, catching each other again and again.
One afternoon towards the end of summer, the man lost his grip and fell. The safety net didn’t hold him, somehow. We held our breaths, but he didn’t bounce back up. He just lay on the ground, until eventually an ambulance came and took him away. The next day the grass behind the beach toilets was empty.
Since then I have sometimes thought it’s the magic of late afternoon light that fixes a moment to eternity. Or maybe it’s spangly white leotards that hold the key to all mystery, this one certainly, but also the mysteries of time, of Africa, of blood, art, beauty, desire, love, death and home.
I hadn’t thought of this for decades till one day in the ‘90s, and glittery clothes had just come back into fashion. I was in Top Shop on Oxford Street and a sparkling white top caught my eye. I stood there and was absolutely flooded with raw emotion, and a deep longing I couldn’t trace. Then I remembered. Circus Phoenix. It seems to me that if you were happy as a child, the sensations that surrounded you then, will hold you in thrall for life.
Earth
I’ve always identified with Earth, despite secretly longing to rather be air, water or fire. But I only really connected with this element later, as an adult with Ralph and the girls on our Southern African travels. This raw, muddy, cracked, living, dusty Africa is a million miles away from the gentle memories of my childhood, and yet… it squares the elemental circle, and besides, we made the connection official when forming…
Yup! We document our travels as The Muizenberg Safari Co. A name that makes total sense. To us. And about 1% of the people we meet on our remote travels who have heard of this beachside village on the tip of Africa.
By the way, here’s a safari-hack, if you were hoping for one. We put a Muizenberg Safari logo on the doors of our South African Landcruiser. In the bush, having a logo = being official, which can get you taken seriously (and inspire brilliant conversations) in all sorts of worthwhile places, like petrol stations and lion kills.
So, that was my elemental Africa, in my blood for sure. Next week – about Ralph – who has been the biggest influence in my life.
Bye for now,
Love Lisa x